Foliage Festival Returns Some Fun To Goodwin Park

October 26, 1992|By KAREN A. DAVIS; Courant Staff Writer

Watching nearly 500 of her neighbors eating cupcakes and doughnuts, painting pumpkins, chatting and lining up for pony rides and hayrides Sunday in Goodwin Park, Lisa Beaudoin had a satisfying feeling of deja vu.

"When I was a kid this park was always filled with people," Beaudoin, 30, said. "Now there's crime, drugs and beatings, and people are afraid to come out. When you don't have a lot of people around, that's when you start having problems." But a year-old neighborhood group, the Friends of Goodwin Park, hopes to rid the park of crime and convince residents that a combined effort is needed to prevent the 237-acre park from deteriorating.

The group's effort Sunday was to sponsor a three-hour Fall Foliage Festival near the pond in "Goodie" Park. The event included a bake sale, pony rides, and a pumpkin patch and pumpkin-painting area.

"I think this is just great," said Tina Tromba, who attended the festival with her husband, three children, three nieces and mother-in-law. "It's a nice place to bring the kids and meet your neighbors."

People of all ages abandoned their fears Sunday as they listened to music blaring from a shed that the Friends hope to convert into a community room. Braving 40-degree temperatures and frequent winds, neighbors spoke of good memories and positive changes in the park.

In the past year, the Friends persuaded the city to put in a swing set, hire a community service officer, resurface the parking lot, add a fence along Maple Street and add parking spaces along South Street, said Danielle Hodges, a co-chairwoman of the group.

"I've been here my whole life," Beaudoin said of the neighborhood near the park, which straddles the Hartford-Wethersfield line. "I grew up in this neighborhood, bought a house here and worked as a lifeguard for the parks system for 10 years ... I remember, in the winter, skating on the pond. In the summer, my mother used to drop us off at the pool, and we'd play at the park all day."

Gail Figueiredo took her two children to the festival to get away from the normal Sunday routine of watching football and cooking.

"It's fun for the kids to get out; it's like a family day," she said. "It's a chance to do something with the kids and also meet people you didn't know." Paul LaRosa, who plays golf regularly on the park's course and jogs on its paths, volunteered to help host the festival. He said the event, and others like it, would encourage more families to visit the park.

"For me, volunteering is a little like pay back to Goodwin Park for all the time I've spent here," he said.

Patrice Villalobos said she would like to see more family-oriented events at the park to remind people that what goes on there affects neighborhood residents, whether they use the park or not.

"The park wasn't being utilized very much," she said. "Drug deals would take place in the wooded areas. Police would chase them and sometimes [drug dealers] would run through our back yard as they tried to get away. That and the fact that we've had more break-ins recently shows that it affects the whole neighborhood."